Paper Thin
by Lacertae
Summary: I had never met a boy quite like Tom. He made me feel alive again; he made me feel like more than just a copy of my former self. I believed in him so strongly that I didn't recognize where honesty ended and manipulation and outright lies began.
1. Portrait of a Girl

**Disclaimer: **Harry Potter does not belong to me, but I do own Eloise.

**Rating:** T (for now)

* * *

><p><strong><span>I. Portrait of a Girl<span>**

_Her life began in the year 1900 and ended in 1916; however, nothing about Eloise Westenberg's life could ever be considered that black and white. She lived many times, across many years, and died many times as well._

_. . ._

I remembered nearly everything about my former life. I remembered the sound of the students gossiping over breakfast; I remembered the sound of the students cheering over Quidditch matches. Beyond the walls of Hogwarts, the memories faded. I couldn't recall my mother's face or the sound of my father's voice. Somehow, I couldn't even remember the names and sexes of my siblings, if I had any of them at all. I died of some disease, something about my hands and feet, perhaps about my fingers and toes. I went to sleep in my bed and woke up in a frame.

My story seemed entirely unique, but there were hundreds of others just like me. They inhabited the portraits that lined the walls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some of the paintings were quite beautiful, with bits of nature and background elements; other paintings were barren and quite creepy, lacking any feel of humanity. I liked to think that I had a rather friendly disposition, not unlike Giffard Abbott or Basil Fronsac or the talkative Termeritus Shanks. They were really the only ones bold enough or polite enough to speak to me, the newest of the Hogwarts paintings.

At first, my painting hung in the entrance hall for all of my fellow students to see. My housemates, all dressed in yellow and black, would stop to wave or chat between classes, each interaction ending with a sympathetic frown and a promise that they would return the very next free moment. I lived for the moments when my former roommates stopped by to tell me how much they missed me or how much that I had missed, being stuck in my golden frame. I thought that those moments would continue for the duration of their years, but they changed and matured while I stayed exactly the same. I wore the same white dress and kept the same wavy, red locks. They grew breasts and got boyfriends; they snuck out at night to make out under the stars. They lived.

Five years later, the groundskeeper moved my painting from the entrance hall to the trophy room. From that point on, it became a sort of game. My painting would inhabit a hall or a room for so long, then another painting would move in, and the groundskeeper would return to move my painting to yet another place. Each move took me further and further from the eyes of the public. From the entrance hall to the trophy room to the third-floor corridor—none of the students recognized me anymore and the professors had better things to do than stop and talk to the remnants of Eloise Westenberg.

By the 1930s, my painting hung on a drafty wall near the rear of the library, overlooking the entrance to the restricted section. Other paintings had important jobs, such as guarding secret passages or protecting information. I had no job but to stay out of the way and take up an empty space where a moth-eaten portrait of the Middle Ages once hung. My temporary job had been to catch students sneaking into the restricted section, but within a couple of years of the move, another painting—one of Valeria Myriadd—was placed within the shadows of the restricted section. It made no sense for me to play the role of the rat, not when Valeria had the better of our personalities.

I listened to students whispering between the stacks of books, catching snippets about the war and a man named Gellert Grindelwald, but none of it meant much to me, not within the safe walls of the school. No one smiled at me or spoke to me, and not a single student asked for my assistance with locating a textbook or any number of their class assignments. For the first time, I understood why the groundskeeper moved the paintings around so often. We lost hope, we lost the desire to exist, and we let ourselves go with time—we longed for our former lives with such force that we destroyed the ghost of a life we had left. I was finally thankful for my shadowy place on the wall. I spent most of my time being miserable.

And then **_he_ **appeared.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** _What do you think of the introductory chapter? Review. Send me a message. Let me know what you think. I'm posting for feedback._


	2. Fingerprints

**Disclaimer: **Harry Potter does not belong to me, but I do own Eloise. I cited where I thought appropriate.

**Thank You: **Thanks to _Yanyu_ and _Charlie Seven _for reviewing! I really appreciated the feedback; I'm glad you like the story.

* * *

><p><strong>II. Fingerprints<strong>

_1938_

Everyone knew about Tom Marvolo Riddle, the orphan boy. The other paintings described him as poor, but brilliant, parent-less, but brave, and a model student even at such a young age (_HP:CoS_). Every portrait in the school had bets placed on which house that bright young boy would inhabit. Giffard Abbott thought that the child would be in Hufflepuff, though I was sure he only hoped for such a thing; Basil Fronsac, the brightest of us all, was so certain the young boy would be placed in Ravenclaw; Termeritus Shanks felt that the boy had a destiny in Gryffindor; and Valeria—well, I never rightly cared for her thoughts and opinions on the matter. Regardless, all the paintings lost that bet. That brilliant little orphan made himself a home in the house of Slytherin, the one house we all hoped he would avoid.

After that, Tom became a taboo subject for quite some time. He seemed too quiet between classes; he didn't have enough friends. When those excuses wore thin, the paintings found he seemed too arrogant and he made the wrong type of friends. No one really knew what to make of him, the boy we held such hopes for, even before he had a chance to grow and fill those shoes.

One day, when I had lost interest in the boy, I noticed him at a table in the far corner of the library. Breaking my usual pose, I uncrossed my arms and leaned forward in the painting, trying to see so much more than the back of the boy's head. He was bent over a thick volume on Transfiguration, but he pulled his head up every so often to scratch a few notes on a single piece of parchment just to the right of the book. His hair was so short that I could see his pale neck when he leaned forward to read the top of a page; when he sat back to take his notes, the bit of pallid flesh vanished, leaving nothing at all for me to observe about him, other than his school robes and black, patent-leather shoes on his feet.

"Isn't he just ghastly? Sitting there like he owns the place," a blonde whispered as she started down my row of books, completely blocking my view of the boy. "He's an orphan, Etta. He lives with the Muggles. Mum says they've got nothing more to offer us than blood, sweat, and tears," she continued, being joined by a shorter brunette.

Neither of the girls paid me any mind, whether or not they knew I shared the very same space. The blonde made fun of Tom for his living arrangements and his lack of family; the brunette made fun of Tom for his questionable lineage and his lack of money. None of those things really mattered in the world outside of their childish minds, something that took me ten years to finally process, but I wasn't about to interrupt. I didn't really have to, not when their voices rose above a whisper.

The books above the girls' heads began to rattle on the shelves. One by one, the thick books began to slide closer and closer to the edges of the shelves, making lines in the dust that had accumulated on the wooden shelves. The girls dropped whatever they had in their arms, leaving their schoolbooks and papers to scatter on the floor, and ran away screaming just as the library volumes began to rain down on their heads. The librarian rushed by the end of the stacks, muttering about teenage girls and bloody tricks, but I knew those girls had done nothing to cause the raucous that had taken place.

With the aisle clear of individuals, I had a perfect view of that library table tucked so neatly in the corner. Tom Riddle no longer had his face in the worn volume dedicated to Transfiguration. He sat with his legs off to the side, his wand hidden from view by the sleeve of his dress shirt. The very tip of his wand had been pointed at the top of the bookshelf, right above where the girls had been standing.

I knew that students jinxed one another between classes, doing all-around terrible things to one another, but I had never seen anyone do it with such a straight face. Tom's lips were pressed together and his eyes narrowed in concentration. Other than that, no sort of joy appeared in his facial features. He looked absolutely calm, and he kept that same look even when the librarian returned.

The older woman cleaned up the fallen books with a wave of her hand, her bespectacled eyes falling upon my painting with some distaste. For a moment, I thought she would ask me what had happened. I thought she would complain to me about those childish girls and their need to cause trouble. I thought those things right up until the moment when she spun on her heel and went off to the next batch of troublemakers, leaving me with a view of that boy and his empty eyes.

He still sat sideways in his chair, but he'd concealed his wand. The book on Transfiguration had been closed sometime between when the librarian returned and when she left. When I finally got the nerve to look at more than his stature in the chair, I noticed that he was no longer staring at the stack of books. His eyes were set on me. He knew I'd seen him and I knew that he knew.

"Hello there," I finally spoke, my voice echoing down the short, narrow aisle. His expression didn't change when he heard my voice, and he didn't stir when I changed my position within the frame to wave at him. "You're Tom Riddle. Everyone knows about you. You're brilliant." I tried being nice to him, not that it was out-of-character for me, and I tried showing some sort of appreciation and recognition for his young mind, but something changed.

Pivoting in his chair, he collected the thick volume from atop the library table and then slid off the edge of his seat. He tucked the book under his right arm, though he had to use his left hand for further support, and took a few steps toward the door, his posture indicating that he'd lost interest in me and everything that the library had to offer him. When I thought he'd gone without a word, my shoulders fell in mild defeat. Someone had noticed me, someone that didn't know my former self or my family, and he'd left without a word—or so I thought.

Just as I crossed my arms and relaxed back into my seat, I saw a flash of pale flesh. He stood in the library doorway, his hand raised for the briefest of waves. He didn't smile at me and he didn't speak to me. In fact, he left right after I had noticed him waving.

I really didn't know what to make of him.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** _I didn't get a lot of feedback for the introductory chapter, but I'm really passionate about this story and I'm hoping that every single reader finds it worthwhile. __As a future warning, watch the dates. Tom isn't going to stay eleven forever. I didn't think this deserved a mention at the beginning of the chapter, since everything was explained in the text._

xX **review** Xx


End file.
